The Day the Dragons Came
by Nancy Brown
Summary: Two years ago, dragons destroyed the world while Torchwood stood by helplessly. It's time to fight back.
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: The Day the Dragons Came (by Mica Davies, Age 7) (Part 1 of 4)  
**Author**: **nancybrown**  
**Prompt**: Reign of Fire  
**Characters**: Team, Rhys, Martha, Mickey, Rhiannon, kids  
**Pairings**: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys, Mickey/Martha  
**Rating**: R  
**Warnings**: character death, child endangerment, graphic descriptions of burn wounds  
**Spoilers**: goes AU after "Something Borrowed," TW: COE (characters only), DW: The Stolen Earth, SJA: Death of the Doctor  
**Word Count:** 20,000 (4,400 this part)  
**Disclaimer**: Characters from Torchwood and Doctor Who belong to the BBC. "Reign of Fire" belongs to Spyglass, Touchstone, and Buena Vista. No infraction of their copyright is intended or should be inferred.  
**Summary**: Two years ago, dragons destroyed the world while Torchwood stood by helplessly. It's time to fight back.  
**Beta**: **wynkat1313**, **fide_et_spe**, and **eldarwannabe** did the heavy lifting for the beta on this. **amilyn** did a fantastic medpick. The remaining errors are all mine.  
**Author's Notes**: Written for **reel_torchwood**. No familiarity with the film is necessary. (It's a B-movie with dragons. They eat people.)  
**AN2**: I am cross-posting on Monday.

* * *

  
Chapter One

* * *

_It is dragon day. Dragons are big and they make fire. My mummy is sad. She misses my daddy. I miss my Daddy. Dragons will eat you. Dragons will make you fire. The End_

* * *

The morning dawned cold and grey, with a thick fog covering the bay and everything surrounding. The thin light never reached them below in the Hub, which would be powered by the generators long after everyone but Jack was dead. Some of the younger children no longer remembered the sunlight, proper sunlight, and thought the sun was a golden disc from a fairy tale. Ianto came up here every day when it wasn't suicidally dangerous, and some days when it was, just to see the filtered light through the mist and smoke. He remembered things, that was one of his duties, and he wanted to remember what natural light looked like so that someone did.

This morning, the natural light was miserable.

The crumbled wreck that used to be a Tourist Centre was open to the sky, covered in ash and ancient bird shit. On the first day that he'd seen the ruin, Ianto had gone on autopilot, getting out a broom and attempting to clear away the mess until Gwen had pulled the broom from his hands and held him while he tried to stop shaking.

It was the second anniversary of their complete failure to save the world. There ought to be a cake, but candles, cigarettes, anything that made fire, these things were blasphemous. Fire was for the monsters that had boiled out of the Rift like locusts one horrible night, setting the world ablaze while Torchwood watched in horror from their locked-down base. He could still remember every moment, the five of them screaming and swearing at each other as the systems refused to operate and the doors refused to open. It was the only time Ianto could ever recall Jack shouting at Toshiko while she broke down in sobs because she was unable to release the locks until the city, the country, the whole Earth had been a burning mess above their heads.

His hands were trembling. With an effort, he stilled them. No scent of extra sulphur in the air, no sign of anything in the vicinity when he'd checked the scanners before stepping outside. He checked the skies for any movement, but saw nothing. There were no birds, not anymore.

They would need to travel out for food today.

The heavy door opened behind him. "How's the weather?" The fog dampened Jack's words, making them small and solid, intimate in the false enclosure of the white and grey walls.

"Cold and shitty. It'll do." Rain was best, but the weather had changed, and mist was more common than rain in Cardiff.

Some mornings like this, Jack would take the rare chance at privacy to wrap his arms around Ianto's waist and whisper dirty things in his ear until they were both so horny they'd risk a quick visit to one of the nearby ruins and rut until neither could think. Some mornings, Ianto could forget.

Today was the second anniversary and no arms were offered, no respite allowed. Jack wrapped himself inside whatever banked angers he sulked on this morning, as misty and unreadable as the sun. He'd worn this same face when the last transmission came through from UNIT: they'd gone against the dragons, armed and resigned, with guns and tanks and nuclear bombs, and the dragons won. There were other transmissions Jack had tried to make since then. No-one ever answered.

"Breakfast is on," Jack said. "It's pancakes." Their last foraging expedition had yielded a bounty of aging flour and more baking supplies than anyone had seen in over a year, found under the burned shell of an otherwise preserved ASDA. They'd also found enough instant coffee to last for months, assuming they could abide the taste.

Ianto nodded and joined Jack as they went back inside, shutting the metal door tight behind them. The electric lights down here made things seem normal, like nothing had changed, and sometimes he paused in this corridor, wishing as hard as he could that when he went to open the door below, everything would be back to how it had been.

The cog door opened. Nothing was how it had been. He sighed, then followed Jack through what had once been a top secret alien fighting base, and now was the last hideout for most of the survivors in South Wales.

They'd gone out after the locks had given, armed and useless and scouting the burning streets for whatever and whoever wasn't ash. Most of the people who hadn't died had fled, but some had been trapped, and the team had worked to free them as they kept frightened eyes on the skies. One wing of a nearby school had been spared, teachers and students both, and more people trickled in after as they ventured out further. Two weeks in, they'd taken a small party to Newport, and thank God, literally, for the church Rhiannon had fled to with the children. Rhys had taken longer to locate, and his burns had been severe, but Owen saved him. Now everyone lived here in the warren of rooms and cells and spare spaces that made up the underground base. Myfanwy and Janet had been let loose to fend for themselves, the most lethal of their possessions that weren't effective on a dragon had been stored away, and the rest of the space gone to hold frightened people with broken families.

The converted kitchen was just off the main Hub. A warm, rich scent of pancakes wafted through the area, covering the more typical smells of unwashed humans and the ever-present and thus nearly forgotten odour of burnt buildings. Rhiannon gave him a shadowed glance as he came in, and Ianto made himself reach over to kiss her on the cheek, get a not-smile in return as she handed him a plate. Everyone had lost people they'd loved two years ago, and there was no room for offering her special sympathy for the grief she felt today.

He sat down at the low table with Jack, who'd already sat across from Gwen.

Gwen stared at her food unhappily, finally coaxing down a few dry bites. "I'd give a lot for some honey."

Honey would make their hands sticky, since utensils were only brought out when necessary. Ianto had learned how little he needed a fork. His mother would be horrified at their manners, but it kept bellies full and water for more important tasks. On the other hand, honey would make a nice treat for the children. He could still recall one long night with Jack a lifetime ago, when they'd painted one another with warm honey and licked the patterns clean.

"I'll put that on the shopping list," he said, chewing his own food. Jack himself was digging in happily, taking great bites with relish, although Ianto supposed that after starving to death twice (according to his stories) Jack was grateful even for this meagre meal.

Gwen put down her pancake and grabbed her stomach. Jack and Ianto gave her sympathetic looks, but said nothing while she took short, huffing breaths until the nausea passed. Finally, she collected herself and took another bite of food before surrendering. Jack picked up her last pancake without asking and started chewing on it. No-one let food go to waste.

"Morning sickness is supposed to end after the first bloody trimester," she said, sipping her juice; they'd found powdered juices and everyone was enjoying the chalky taste like it was wine.

"You're just special," Jack said thickly, dropping crumbs from his mouth as he spoke. Ianto didn't let himself make a face.

"There you are," said Rhys amiably, and he plopped down beside Gwen, his own plate of pancakes hot from the frypan. She turned greener watching him eat. "What's wrong?" he asked around a bite of his own food.

Ianto said, "Nothing that four more months won't fix," and Gwen smiled at him weakly as he finished his breakfast. He pushed his cup over to her, and she gratefully drank down his juice after her own. Vitamins, Owen was constantly telling them. The secret to fighting scurvy and disease, and building healthy babies. Owen didn't need vitamins, being technically dead, but he was the enabler of vitamins in others.

"How's the weather?" Rhys asked. He'd rolled up his sleeves to eat, and the angry red scars that covered his arms flexed oddly as he brought the food to his mouth. Like the rest of the men, he'd grown a beard, and it bristled as he chewed. Only Owen and Jack were bare-faced; Ianto wasn't putting Jack's straight razor anywhere near his own throat.

"Cold. Misty. We'll go out after we've eaten."

Rhys nodded, and then wolfed down his food. Gwen sat back, gazing at the three of them unhappily. It was Rhys's turn in the rota for foraging, and she worried every time. Everyone took a turn, no two from the same family could go out together, and children, pregnant women, the severely injured, and undead doctors were the only ones exempt. They lost someone about every month, not counting Jack, who'd been rendered to white-hot plasma more times than Ianto could bear remembering.

It was no wonder, really, that the second largest cause of death amongst the refugees was suicide. They'd lost two more last week, and the anniversary surely wouldn't pass without taking its own grisly toll. None of the children had died, and that was something to hold onto, one success out of a world of failure.

When they finished eating, Gwen took extra time to linger with her husband, holding his hand and kissing him while the rest affected not to watch. They were all used to pretending not to notice the various couplings in the darker corridors, to walk out quickly when finding someone with a lover in one of the few unoccupied rooms. Even Jack's tiny bunker often slept four people these days. Jack and Ianto got the camp bed, a luxury which Ianto used to consider a poor substitute for the bed at his flat.

"I'll get the car ready," he said, and hurried to what used to be their car park. It had survived mostly intact, as had the SUV. Any vehicles they found on the streets unburned had their petrol siphoned out and brought here, and the SUV itself was covered in the stoutest steel barriers they could attach. The KPG, already low by any environmental standards, had plummeted from the weight, but then, the Earth was no longer in danger of ecological catastrophe from automobiles, nor did anyone have to concern themselves with gloomy Peak Oil predictions.

Dragons: the solution to all the world's problems.

Ianto laughed, then startled himself with the sound in the quiet car park. Sane people didn't laugh to themselves, but then, there was nothing sane about this situation.

He filled the tank from one of their cans, and loaded two empties into the boot. Thinking about it, he loaded a third. There had been a stalled-out Citroën on the road leading to their last find, and they hadn't checked it for petrol.

A few minutes later, Jack, Rhys, and the rest of today's team joined him. Six people in the SUV meant two to watch the skies and four to forage, which in turn meant more food for everyone. It also meant lower fuel efficiency, less space to haul what they found, and a higher likelihood of attracting attention. Jack, Ianto, Gwen and Owen went over the mathematics of survival almost nightly. The numbers never added up to a result they liked.

As the car rolled out roughly along streets turned to rubble and old tar, Ianto picking out the clearest part of the roads by memory, Jack kept watch on the skies. In the back, the rest ought to be chatting nervously, Rhys cracking a joke to make everyone more at ease. But no-one spoke above a whisper, and the silence from outside crumpled in on them like cotton.

"There," said Jack, pointing to a street they hadn't checked yet. Jack had lived in Cardiff far longer than anyone else, knew the little alleyways and side streets, remembered the routes they'd checked, and those they'd abandoned. Jack knew where the green grocers had been, and the restaurants, and the bars.

Liquor they had in great supply. Food was what little could be grown in the greenhouse, and what they found in increasingly spoiled, rat-gnawed, and charred caches. The first year, two of the teachers had insisted on trying a tiny garden in what had been a public park far enough away from the Hub to divert attention. Some of the other survivors had joined them, planting what seeds they found inside the last of the fresh vegetables.

They'd all been working the plot the day a dragon annihilated it.

Every gain was like that. The firehouses had been looted by shrewd scavengers before the end of the first week, but their group had cobbled together two suits of protective gear. They had meant the difference, for a while, between burning to death and merely being injured. One of the suits had been stolen in a raid, the other was destroyed during a particularly violent encounter with a large red dragon that had cost three lives aside from Jack's. They'd had better luck with fire extinguishers, but they'd drained the last one months ago, and no more had turned up: something else to look for if he had the chance.

The streets were empty of people, but the animals too small to be on a dragon's menu wandered them like kings. With the explosion of the rat population came the dominance of the cats and the feral dogs and the Weevils. Torchwood no longer worried about Cardiff's Weevil population. They just avoided them as much as possible, and kept their eyes open for dragons and other humans.

Sometimes the other humans were worse.

So many had died in the first few days, but some of those who'd lived chose to take whatever they wanted and could possess. Twice their base had been attacked by small bands of strangers who didn't realise the firepower guarding what they thought were a few women and children. The foraging teams always carried guns when they went out, and not because they had a chance in hell of taking down a dragon with one.

They saw no humans out this time. Plenty of cats, though.

The SUV came to a stop in front of what had been a small corner shop. Jack tapped Jenna to stay outside with him with the guns. Ianto and Rhys took the others to check out the ruin. The roof had burnt and fallen in, which meant some quick hefting to remove the worst of it, the wood splintering and concrete crumbling under their thick leather work gloves as they tossed everything haphazardly away. Once they'd excavated to the interior, Ianto handed out the torches.

Don let out a cry as his flashed over something. Ianto came closer, and saw the same thing: the last decay of a ruined body caught in the destruction. Empty eye sockets stared at the broken wall. The poor sod's uniform was ripped and scorched, but the blue still shone through.

"Come on," said Ianto. "Keep looking."

They dug through ceiling tiles and smashed glass, pulling out cans of fish, crushed boxes of instant potatoes, and plenty of beans. Plastic jars of salad cream went in with bottles of fizzy pop. Ianto threw auto supplies from one row into his bag along with all the crisp bags from what used to be the next aisle. He made a forlorn look at the sweets, but the ants and rats had taken everything long ago.

A grin crossed his face. A single bear-shaped plastic container of honey had survived intact. He picked through the debris and grabbed it. "Rhys." He didn't shout. They never shouted.

"Yeah?"

"Catch." He tossed the honey bear to Rhys, who caught it with a smile and stuffed it into his own bag.

"Thanks, mate."

Jack voice pierced the quiet in a low tone that carried. "Run!"

Instinct said to drop the bags and get out, but instinct was wrong. Ianto clutched his bag tightly against himself and ran back towards the SUV. The air around them stank of sulphur and worse. Jack's 51st century senses could scent it sooner than anyone, could see the movements in the fog before the rest, and so they survived more than they died. Ianto swallowed his terror, and then one of the others screamed as the dragon came into full view.

The great beast's head turned sharply at the sound. Oh God, it had been passing by, not scenting them for prey.

Ianto reached the SUV as Rhys did, and threw his bag into the boot while Rhys piled inside. Jack yelled at Jenna to get in as the others hurried towards him.

The dragon came upon them fast. They had to get inside, had to go. The air roared with its approach. Jack glanced at Ianto and nodded. He took off running and shouting in a line away from the car. Ianto wasted a precious second watching him go, then jumped into the SUV and started the engine. Don was the last one in and Ianto waited, had to wait, they'd die waiting, but Jack shouted at the top of his lungs and the dragon veered towards him.

There was an intense blast of heat they could feel even in the car. Ianto pretended he couldn't hear Jack scream.

Ianto gunned the engine, cursing the squeal of tyres as they kicked up gravel and torn up pavement. The dragon would turn, would attack, and the SUV was shielded, but not enough.

He flew through the broken streets recklessly - who could outrun a dragon? - ramming small obstacles, waiting any second for fire to wash over them all, cook them alive inside the steel oven they'd built themselves. In the back, someone started to cry.

The dragon was suddenly in front of him. His stomach lurched, and he threw the engine into reverse abruptly, probably destroying the transmission as he did. They jerked in their seats, no longer quiet, everyone shouting and screaming as it got closer. There was a sharp crunch as he backed them into something solid, and then there was no more room behind them.

And if there was no place to go, he went the only place he could. He slammed the engine back into drive and aimed it straight for the dragon. They'd never tried ramming one. They'd die, they'd all die, but maybe they could take one with them as they did. The screaming behind him increased, but he blocked it out, blocked it all out.

Ianto headed straight for the dragon, and the dragon drew back. Then it pumped its wings and flew up and away. Still screaming, still clutched with terror, he kept driving, not caring where he was going or what he was hitting on the road.

A hand clutched his shoulder. Rhys's. "Ianto. Stop the car. It's gone." He spoke with a steady calmness which, Ianto recognised distantly, meant he was trying to calm down a crazy person. As the SUV slowed to a stop, it trickled into Ianto's mind that the crazy person was him.

"We got away," Rhys said, still gently.

"No, they never go away." Except sometimes, they did. His fingers held the wheel in a death grip, and slowly he pried them free. He opened his door, expecting death, and he looked up around him. Nothing but mists, nothing in the air. For whatever reason, it had abandoned them.

"Let's go home," said Jenna, pleading in her voice.

Ianto didn't reply. But he got back into the SUV and drove back towards the bay, stopping only to siphon two measly litres of petrol from the Citroën.

They unloaded their finds in the car park and carried them down to the Hub proper. Beans and salad cream for the kitchen and oil for the engine, and fizzy pop and stale crisps and a small pot of honey shaped like a bear for the children. Set on the table, it looked like less than nothing, like things he would have thrown out from his old flat.

Rhiannon's gaze took in the food, the dull looks on their faces, and that they'd come back as five instead of six. "You did good," she said in a quiet voice, and started putting everything away. Ianto sat at the table, watching her without really watching, as the others drifted away back to their rooms and friends and what passed for their families, the realisation creeping in that they'd survived their turn on the rota.

"You shouldn't go out tomorrow," Rhi said, when she sat down across from him. "Take a day off."

"If I don't go, you'll have to."

"Then I'll go have a chat with Old Scratch." Her tone was light, even if her eyes weren't.

"And leave me here to watch David and Mica? I'd rather face a dragon any day."

She laughed, the first she'd laughed all day, and placed a hand on his.

As if summoned, the children bounded into the kitchen, full of smiles and excitement. Ianto couldn't understand where they found their reservoirs of hope, and he envied them.

Mica said, "I did a paper today." The surviving teachers occupied the children with lessons. On bad days, Ianto wondered why they bothered. On good days, he acknowledged that keeping the kids busy was useful, and the ones who lived to grow up would be best suited with an education. There weren't many good days.

If Rhi felt the same, she hid it better. "Did you, now? What on?"

"The 'versary."

"Ah." Rhi's eyes went dim again. "That's good, then."

David said, "My class did maths this morning." He said it quickly to divert his sister's attention, but it didn't work.

"It's been two years today. Everyone says," she said.

"Yes, sweetheart," said Rhi.

Ianto asked David, "What maths did you learn?"

"Division. It's like multiplication, but backwards."

Mica kept talking. "Marissa says it's special because it's two years, and we ought to sing songs or something."

"You take a big number, and you see how many times the smaller number goes in."

Ianto and Rhiannon shared a look, but there was nothing to be said. With Johnny dead, Ianto had stepped up for the children, but there was only so much he could give with everything else he had to do to keep them all alive. Rhiannon was still not used to being a single parent, but she also knew they were lucky. Most of the children down here had no parents left at all. The few families they had saved - mainly from the estate, hiding in the church with Rhi - were wrecked, their missing members haunting them like phantom limbs. Ianto himself was insanely lucky. Of everyone he knew, he was the only one who hadn't lost anyone he'd loved the day the dragons rained fire down upon them. After was a different story, but he knew he'd averted tragedy in a way no-one else could claim, which he supposed was why he was the one whose lover died almost every day. Even that was unfair. After all, it was Jack who did the actual dying. One of these days, his luck was going to fail him.

He let David tell him more about school, as the other children wandered into the kitchen wanting their dinner. (Beans and a bit of bread.) He took his own plate to Jack's office, where he could be alone for a few minutes. Below, the Hub bustled with people going about the tasks that made up their daily lives here: cleaning, mending, and the few who'd proven trustworthy working on whatever bits of alien tech might help them live longer, or kill the dragons, or both. Nothing they'd tried so far had worked. If Tosh were here, she could have found something by now.

Ianto shut that part of his brain down, not wanting to deal with it. He sopped up the last of the salty sauce with his bread, leaving his plate almost as clean as if he'd washed it. Then he saw the perimeter light flash. Someone or something had entered the Tourist Centre.

He set his plate down on the desk and headed up. His sidearm was always on him, but as he approached the steel door, he heard the knock.

Dragons never knocked.

Ianto released the lock. Jack pulled the door open. He was naked but for a few charred remnants of his trousers, making him look like nothing so much as a post-Hulk Bruce Banner, tired and sore from walking back alone and barefoot.

They didn't speak as they closed the door, nor as they walked together to Jack's office and climbed down into the bunker below, where Jack could strip off the last of his ruined clothing. When Ianto went to press his lips against Jack's, it was only intended to be a quick kiss, a brief touch of affection. Saying "Thank you for burning to death so we could live" was beyond Ianto's capabilities.

Jack tasted like ashes, and that hurt, but his mouth parted with a sigh, and the kiss deepened. Their roommates were elsewhere. They were alone for once. Ianto made a rapid decision, pressing Jack's shoulders down to the bed and tugging at his own clothes. The kisses became messy, as hands fumbled for skin to touch and the soft whispers they always shared became a chorus of "Please" and "Jesus" and "Yes." The condoms had long since been donated to the couples who needed them for contraception (and still a defective one had got Gwen up the duff) and the lube was running low. It had been such a long time for this, though, for stretching and slicking and the simple, pure beauty of fucking.

They didn't have much time, but they could take this moment for themselves, give that to each other today on the anniversary of the day the world ended.

* * *


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

* * *

_The first rul is always keep both eyes on the sky. The secend rul is always listen to Captin Jack. The third rul is you must never never ever tell a lie. The forth rul is always eat your food. The fith rul is always stay quiet._

* * *

At twilight, the dragons were at their thickest. The wild dogs and worse that roamed the streets were out then, hunting the cats and rats, but not unwilling to take down a small or unwary human. When the survivors were desperate for supplies, they sometimes ventured forth in the dusk, hoping to find a meal without disturbing the dragons with gunshots for the dogs and Weevils that came too close.

Sometimes the dogs were the meal. After Jack had cleaned the first couple he'd brought back, he'd stopped thinking about it. Their casualties were highest when they went out late; he'd eat a dog if it meant avoiding anyone's painful death, including his own.

When the weather was foggy enough, he went out alone at this time of day bundled in his coat. The first coat, the good coat, had burned ages ago, sending him up like a matchhead under the furnace heat of a dragon's breath. This coat kept out the chill, and allowed him to move.

Few buildings remained of what was once Cardiff's skyline: skeletons of towers, unsafe to be near. Sometimes when one fell, they felt the tremors below and the children cried and the adults waited, wondering if the roof would collapse. Skypoint should have fallen first, its ugly corpse instead jutting up at the sky angrily like an upturned finger. Jack hated the building irrationally, but every evening he could, he climbed what remained of the stairs and clambered up the rest of the way to reach the highest peak left standing in Cardiff.

Then he took out his mobile, the CB radio, and the ham radio, each packed tightly into a heavy rucksack, and he set up the ham, and he called for help. He changed frequencies, scanned across countries, found nothing but static every night, or rarely, a similar cry for help from halfway across the Continent. The mobile was recharged from the Hub and fresh, but he only ever dialled two numbers. If the Doctor answered, Jack would have to fight between asking him for aid, and cursing him for not coming when they'd needed him most.

Without a working tower or network, the mobile that could call the Doctor anywhere in space and time could not dial down the road. But every night, Jack dialled in Alice's number, and held the phone to his ear as it refused to connect.

The night was clearing from the day's fog, with little pinpricks of stars poking through above him. The mobile in his hand looked for service and found none. He closed it, and started to disassemble his equipment when he heard a noise.

Jack spun, ready to be turned into a briquette once again, but the noise was from the radio, spitting out a signal.

_"Hello? Come in? Anyone?"_

Jack fumbled with the mic and thumbed it on. "Hello, whoever you are, you just became the most beautiful voice I've ever heard."

There was a pause, and Jack twisted, remembering the men who'd tried to break into the Hub. Not every voice was friendly, and not everyone would react to his flirting with a positive reaction, just another damn thing wrong with this whole situation.

The radio made a noise, and then a new voice came on the line: _"State your name, rank, and favourite place to take a moonlight stroll, please."_

Joy burst through him. "Martha Jones, I love you."

* * *

The convoy rolled into the street at noon the next day. The nights were filled with great flights of the beasts, roaring and devouring anything unwary enough to be outside, but daytime was usually safe. Dragons often rested by day, only coming out to forage alone for a meal.

Jack led a handful of his people outside to meet the newcomers. Well, he chose to use the word "led," when "was griped at by everyone until he gave in and said okay" would be more appropriate. Ianto refused to leave Jack's side under any circumstances that didn't involve getting eaten or cooked. Gwen had insisted on coming up for this, and no amount of ordering her otherwise would change her mind. Rhys wasn't going to stay below if she wasn't, and by that point, Owen was just too curious not to join the rest of them, and anyway, he'd liked Martha.

They were armed, of course. It could be a trap. It had been a trap the day Andy died.

Jack put on his best smile as the first of three trucks pulled up. Martha slowly stepped out, clearly favouring her right leg as she made her way over for hugs.

"It's good to see all of you," she said.

She was thinner than Jack remembered, and she'd never had an ounce of spare flesh on her to begin with, not when they'd first met, not after the Year That Only Involved Monomaniacal Dictators and Not Goddamned Dragons. Even as she embraced Gwen roundly, there was something hard about Martha that he'd never seen before, and he ached a little, even as he rejoiced that she was alive.

"Oi, a little help here?"

Jack's head shot up to see the other person climbing out of her truck. "Mickey Mouse!"

"Captain Cheesecake," said Mickey pleasantly. He started pulling out the biggest guns Jack had seen in years. Jack elbowed Ianto and the two of them went over to the truck, gleeful as kids at Christmastime. He took Mickey into a quick hug, which Mickey broke first.

As the others in their party unloaded the rest of the trucks, Ianto made his way over to help them carry the weapons.

Jack said to Mickey, "I don't get it. How are you here?"

"It was Rose. Ever since You Know Who stranded her in that parallel world with her mum and dad, she's been tryin' to get back. Our Torchwood developed a dimensional cannon that could shoot someone through. We came."

One of the rules that they didn't say out loud but that everyone knew was not to ask where someone was in case the answer was horrible. Jack didn't ask where Rose was, but he wanted to, and even as the desire welled, he saw the grief on Mickey's face. Jack had grieved her once already, in the wake of Canary Wharf. The new knowledge hit him not as a blow, but instead as a sorrowful finale to a relationship forged from missed chances.

"Does the Doctor know?"

"I think he has to." Mickey looked around. "Don't you think he'd've come by now? But with her gone … "

If Rose had died, the Doctor surely wouldn't abandon Earth. But perhaps he'd find it painful for a while to visit.

"I've been trying to reach him."

"So's Martha. But he's not coming this time."

Jack looked around them in the thin light oozing through the mists, illuminating the ghosts of the jagged-teeth buildings that used to be his city. "No."

"How many do you have here?"

"In the Hub? Fifty-some kids, a little over thirty adults." Ianto knew the exact numbers. Jack had intentionally stopped keeping track months ago.

A small child piled into Mickey's knees, and he picked her up absently as she said, "Is this the place you told us about?"

"Yeah. This is Jack. He's gonna keep everyone safe."

Jack frowned. The Hub was already overcrowded, and now Mickey and Martha had brought more people to his care? "We try," he said instead of, "We're full up." More blankets could be thrown on the floors. They'd find a way.

"What's this?" Ianto called from the last truck, looking over a large arrow curiously.

Martha grinned grimly. "That's a present from a friend."

Mickey said, "You guys used to know a Toshiko Sato?"

Jack stared.

* * *

_He has seen her angry, he has seen her determined. He has never seen her like this._

"I'm going," Tosh says, in a quiet tone that brooks no refusal. Jack didn't even know she had that voice. Over the past few weeks, he's learned many sudden lessons about his team.

Owen says, "I'm going with you." It is the only time he will ever indicate he might be worried for his mother.

"No," Jack says. "We need you both here. You're staying."

Tosh will not be shaken. "I have to find my family."

"They're dead. London is a ruin, Tosh." He hates stating painful truths this way, but he learned a long time ago that nothing else works with her.

"They could have survived. I need to know." Her clothes are in a small sack she can wear on her back. She is taking nothing that they need to survive. The bed she has been using can be given to another of the people they are collecting, the dead-eyed and the frightened and the lost. Despite this, Jack has no intention of letting her go.

"Tosh, you are staying here. We need you. We have to find a way to fight these things."

And he knows the war is over when she says, "We can't."

He can't stop her. But he chains Owen to the wall to keep him there because if they lose their doctor, the rest will die, and Jack can be a bastard for the sakes of the others. Tosh disappears that night. They never see her again.

* * *

Martha lifted the arrows from where they were held, more precious than the children they picked up in dribs and drabs on their long journey here. "Tosh developed these. One straight shot down the gullet of a dragon will kill it."

Owen was always the one to break the taboos. But he was dead, and there were allowances. "Where's Tosh now?"

Mickey and Martha didn't answer, and that was answer enough. Owen swore, loud and long, carrying in the thin silence, but the elegy brought no peace, and no dragons.

"Come on in," said Jack, and he knew they would need more food.

As the newcomers moved past, Ianto and Gwen quietly counting and sorting them, Jack noticed a tousled blond head. His stomach dropped. He'd stopped hoping over a year ago, this was just a coincidental resemblance, there was nothing …

"Uncle Jack?"

Jack fell to his knees, and Steven bounded into his arms, taller than he remembered, and different, but alive, oh goddess, alive.

"How … "

Mickey grinned without humour, not understanding, of course he didn't understand yet. "Found this one in Bath." He petted Steven's hair fondly. "You know him?"

"Yeah." Jack would be content to hug him forever. But he had to know, had to break the rule. "Steven, your mother … " Steven's face told him the rest.

* * *

When they were alone, or what passed for alone, Ianto pulled Jack aside. "Is he your son?"

There'd been a time when he never would have asked, as content to let Jack keep his secrets as he was to hide away his own. Jack had liked their arrangement, but secrets had died with privacy in the warren beneath the ruined city, and lies were absolutely forbidden here because lying got people killed. Anyway, Ianto had long since stopped hiding anything from him. He ought to return the favour.

"He's my grandson. His mother was mine. I managed to reach her once before the phones went down." Alice had been terse, neither of them knowing how long the connection would hold. There was nothing left where she lived, but she could take Steven and a few of the other survivors and strike out for shelter. The line had cut out before he could beg her to find a way to Cardiff.

"I'm sorry," Ianto said, because that was what people said, and also because he probably meant it.

Jack's eyes wandered to where Steven sat with the other new children, being given the first lessons of life in the Hub. He mourned Alice, but for the first time in months, his heart was comforted.

* * *

Martha's leg had been damaged on the first day by shrapnel from a UNIT mortar, and it had never healed properly. She'd treated herself and attempted what physical therapy she could, but even on her good days the old injury slowed her down, and she was stiff after the long drive.

Mickey fell in with her as she came up slowly to the Hub. "How're you feeling?" He was good about asking after her without pressing too deeply unless she indicated he could. She'd have been fine with keeping him in the box of 'handsome man I occasionally shag,' but lately, he'd been giving the other men in their group a keep-off glare and he seemed to be angling for the box labelled 'boyfriend.'

The thought made her smile. Not much else did these days.

"I'll be fine. Just need to stretch." They weren't alone, but no-one who overheard them now would understand. "How did he react?"

"Surprised. Happy."

"Good." She reached for Mickey's hand, and he helped her inside.

* * *

Martha and Mickey eased into their group like they belonged, though the rest - scared UNIT soldiers and the scant survivors they'd found along their journey - were less eager to blend with the Cardiff group. The handful of new children bonded quickly with the children of the Hub. Steven happily devoured pancakes and beans, his mouth full as he laughed at jokes David and the other big boys told.

Rhiannon watched from the sidelines as the adults talked, having discovered for herself long ago the same trick as her brother: a dish flannel and a pile of washing up made her invisible whenever she wanted. She wasn't part of their clique, the ones who kept their sad band intact and fed, not the way Gwen's man was, but she had her own important duties. She oversaw everything in the room Ianto had converted to a primitive kitchen, maintaining the rotation of cooks and stretching their supplies as far as they'd go. She kept the room cosy, encouraging the Torchwood team to meet where she could observe them on her terms. She knew more than she let on, and always listened to every word.

"We've been working on it since the beginning," said Martha. "We tried explosives, lasers, everything. But Tosh figured out this mixture." In her hands, she held an arrow as thick around as a cucumber. Rhi leaned over for a better look, while pretending to reach for another dirty plate.

Mickey said, "Magnesium oxide, C4, a little nitro-glycerine, and a few other things. Send one down the throat of a dragon at the right time, and watch it go boom."

"When's the right time?" asked Gwen, staring at the arrow.

"Right as they go to take a breath. You know, when they're about to flame you."

"Risky," said Rhys. "You'd be standin' right in front of the thing."

Martha said, "It's got to be making fire. You're actually in the path of the flame when it goes." She looked at Jack. "Tosh insisted on testing the prototype herself. She took a big one out with her."

A shiver passed through the table. Rhiannon had only met Tosh briefly before she went outside and never came back. At first glance, she'd seemed shy and self-effacing. At second, there'd been something like steel inside her, and not even Jack had known.

"How many have you killed?" asked Ianto.

"Almost a dozen," Martha said. "I've examined the bodies. There are signs of aging in all of them, like the ones we're seeing are nearing the end of their life cycles. But the really interesting thing is, all of them have been male."

"Could be for a lot of reasons," said Owen. "Males could be more aggressive. Females guard the nests, males go out hunting." Rhi found herself nodding along with his words. The doctor was one of the smartest people left alive, even more than the teachers, and they'd struck up a quiet friendship based on the fact that her little brother was occasionally an annoying prat.

Martha said, "We've only got reports of one nest. We think if we destroy it and take out the mother, we might stop the next generation. The problem is, she's bigger than the others, and meaner."

Mickey added, "And she's got plenty of boyfriends around her to help. We made an assault once. Never seen so many dragons in one place."

Jack said something, but Rhiannon didn't hear him over the sudden laughter from the kids at their table. Steven was grinning ear to ear. Rhiannon frowned.

" ... need your help," said Martha.

"You need someone to stand in front of the dragon, you mean," Ianto said, in that flat voice he used when he was as angry as a bee and didn't want to show it. Dad had used that voice right before his fists came out, but she wasn't about to tell Ianto that.

"There aren't a lot of options left," Martha said. "We've lost dozens of people to this plan already. Some of us got lucky and walked away." She said 'walked' with a hitch. "If we're going to win this, we need to go in with someone we know can survive long enough to take her down."

"Me."

"You're the best bet."

"Yeah. All right. When do we go?" His voice was deceptively light, but his gaze focused on the group of boys.

Ianto said, "Are you serious?"

"Sure. Fry me, bake me, let's get this done. Time?"

Martha smiled thinly. "We were hoping to stay a day or two, refuel if we can find petrol, and then head out."

Mickey said, "We're gonna need more people. The soldiers we brought? They're all we've got left, except for the two we left in London to guard our people there. If the assault's going to succeed, we'll need at least double the number." He glanced out of the mess into the main part of the Hub. Rhiannon followed his eyes.

"Our people here aren't soldiers," said Jack. "We've got some of them trained in basic firearms, but the only ones I'd trust are the people at this table." Rhys looked pleased at being included in that tally. The rest were grim. "I'll go, but the others need to stay."

Gwen said, "Look around. We've got mostly children. We can't leave them unprotected."

"Think about it," said Martha. "If this works, if we're right, we'll be protecting all of them."

Owen said, "We could lock down, make sure they were sealed up tight."

Gwen said, "And trap everyone underground?"

"Better than trapping them up there with the dragons," said Owen.

"We'll talk about it," Jack said. "It'll take a few days to get enough petrol for your trucks together. We've already been out once today." No dragons this morning, Ianto had told her, but they'd gone from street to street and come back with nothing to show for it but two cans of potatoes and one withered squash grown wild in what used to be someone's backyard garden. Rhiannon cut the squash up to put in tonight's soup, saved the seeds, and kept her mouth shut because it could be worse.

"We'll go out with you," said Mickey, hefting an arrow. "Get some of the nastier buggers off your backs."

The little meeting broke up soon after. Gwen excused herself to the loo - thank God they still had plumbing - while Mickey and Martha went to check on the other newcomers. Rhiannon watched the pair, the gentle interplay between them and how they finished each other's thoughts.

Of the adults in their own group, many had taken lovers in a casual kind of marriage. All the fights people had had in the old days about who could get properly married, and now the vicars and judges and everyone were all dead. There'd been a time when she would have been shocked to find out her brother was sleeping with a man, and now she practically pronounced their names "JackandIanto." She missed Johnny, missed having a lover of her own. Lovers were there to share your secrets and also your lies.

She set down her washing up and went to the table as Rhys got up. "Have a sec?"

Jack indicated the seat Rhys had vacated. Ianto said, "We'll look for provisions while we're out getting the petrol."

"That's fine. About Steven. You know him?" This was to Jack.

"Yeah." Jack wore that closed-off face he used when he didn't want to tell people something. Ianto's expression was blank, which meant he knew whatever this particular secret was. She hid her sigh, because honestly, did they think no-one knew their tells?

"When he came in, they said found him with his mother, that she was dead." She didn't miss Jack's flinch. Jack was the type who'd leave a couple of kids behind in every port, wasn't he? "But that doesn't make sense."

Jack said quietly, "Steven said she was gone. He's lucky that they found him."

"Too lucky. On the way to see us, and they happen to pick up a child you know right after his mam gets killed?"

"It's Steven. He's not an illusion or something grown out of a vat. I know him." He glanced at Owen, who shook his head. "He's not reanimated, either."

Ianto said, "We find people all the time, Rhi."

"Listen to me, will you? None of you spend time with the children, not really. I do. And I'm telling you, that's not a boy who lost his mam a week ago." She lowered her voice. "When the kids come in right after, they're shocked and scared. He's playing. If his mam died, it was a while ago. That's all I'm saying." She got up from the table without another word. She had work still to do.

* * *

The foraging team for the afternoon was Jack, Ianto, Mickey, and two of the UNIT soldiers. Martha stayed behind to help Owen with a difficult burn case. Rhys wasn't due on another shift in the rotation, and the pleading in Gwen's eyes kept Jack from asking him anyway. The team loaded up the best-protected of the trucks with all the cans and headed for a car park they occasionally raided for fuel.

Jack held the lookout position, watching and listening and smelling the air, as Ianto picked out the best route to the car park. They'd made this run before, and Jack's concern today was that there weren't many cars left that they hadn't siphoned. So many vehicles and petrol stations had burned in the first wave and then after that he knew they would eventually run out. Raids to the surrounding towns held potential, but the longer they were outside, the more likely it was that they'd attract attention, and it would be for nothing if they lost the whole foraging party and whatever fuel they'd found.

They reached the car park without sighting a dragon, but Jack smelled sulphur on the air. "Let's make this quick." The others took the cans and scattered with the hoses, checking every car they found. Jack stayed with the truck, darting his head around.

Dragons made a noise like a distant train rumbling over tracks in the dead of night, and they smelled like the first strike of a lucifer, back when there'd been such things. He stretched out every sense he had, and he scented danger in the air. Ignoring the scrape of metal on concrete and the wheezing, bubbling sounds of the hoses sipping away at their treasure, he listened.

There was a rush, and the faintest beat of wings.

"We have to go," he said in a low voice that carried. "They're coming."

"One more," said one of the soldiers.

"No time," Ianto said, and he grabbed her can, letting petrol spill noisomely over the pavement. "Go!"

Mickey was the first one back at the truck, but as he dropped his can, he reached in for one of the modified crossbows they'd brought.

"Now's not the time," Jack said, loading the abandoned can.

"Looks like a perfect time to me. Get the others out of here."

Jack made a snap decision. "Give it to me. If it doesn't work, I'll heal."

"Negative, mate. I'm trained on it. You can stick around if you want to watch."

Ianto and the soldiers loaded into the truck. Ianto watched Jack with the same expression he wore every time. If there was another way, Jack would gladly take it, not just to avoid burning to death, but also to be free from that sad, guilty and slightly accusatory look. But there was no other way.

"Go. Come back if it's dead."

Ianto nodded and took off, just as the train noise roared overhead. Jack shouted and ran, trying to distract the dragon away from the truck as well as Mickey. Sometimes he managed to get away. More than once, he'd been eaten. Dull terror filled him as he felt the wind currents shift. The dragon gave chase. He counted the seconds, waiting for the furnace blast to envelop him, for skin to blister and bubble and melt off his bones as his lungs collapsed while he screamed. He never died as quickly as he wished.

"Come here, you ugly brute!" shouted Mickey from where he waited. Jack felt the air move again, and the dragon was no longer chasing him. He kept running, stopped only when he reached the edge of the car park, daring to look back. The dragon had turned to Mickey, was rearing back to draw breath.

Jack's stomach dropped. He'd been standing where Mickey stood now. It always ended in pain.

Mickey grinned, and he fired, and then he ran like hell.

With a sudden understanding, Jack fell to the ground and covered his own head just as the dragon's throat exploded. The great body convulsed, casting limbs over broken cars, destroying the pavement in its death throes. Jack watched, amazed. From across the way, he saw Mickey, hunched down and wary as the tail flopped close to him and then was still.

Jack stood. Carefully, he walked beside the reeking body, trying not to gag at the stench. Mickey joined him at the stump where the dragon's head used to be.

By the time they reached each other, Jack had regained his composure. "Mickey Smith, dragon-slayer," he said with a wide smile. "Never thought I'd see the day."

"You and me both."

Jack heard the crunch of gravel under tyres as the truck came closer. The soldiers got out, unfazed, but Ianto's eyes were like saucers as he looked at the dead dragon. "Shit."

"Yeah."

"It's dead."

"Yeah."

* * *

Music blared, a mix of MP3s that were still loaded on Mainframe. (It was that or Jack's old records, and Jack had been outvoted.) The party spilled down through the corridors of the Hub, echoing in the disused train tunnel. They had plenty of booze and few enough reasons to celebrate that although Jack had thought about telling the rest to keep it down, he couldn't bear to dampen their spirits. Mickey was greeted as a hero and his companions as saviours come to free them from the bloody dragons once and for all.

Even his team was relaxing, and that was a joy to see. Gwen and Owen weren't drinking, but Rhys and Ianto both had cups of beer. Jack wasn't ready to drink tonight, but when the five of them found one another standing in a quiet corner together, they all raised their glasses of beer or juice (Owen just bowed his head) and had a moment for Tosh. Rhys then set down his cup and took his wife's hands, and pulled her away to dance as she squealed happily. It was a good sound, one Jack intended to treasure.

Ianto swayed a bit to the music. Feeling something was expected of him, Jack leaned over. "Wanna dance?"

"Nope." Ianto took a long drink. As he swallowed, he was suddenly faced with a wall of breathless sister.

"Come on," Rhi said, and grabbed his hand.

Jack worried for a moment that something had happened to one of the kids, but Rhiannon made a beeline for the other dancers. She just wanted someone out there with her. Ianto put on a rictus of horror at being forced to dance with his sister, but she rolled her eyes at him and made him start moving, and soon he was as into the offbeat rhythm as she was. Jack laughed to watch them, to see them both having fun for once.

"I'd give a lot to have my mobile," said Owen.

"Why?"

"I want to show him pictures of this when he's sober."

Jack laughed again. Then he dug into his pocket for his own mobile, the one that never worked. "Go forth. I want copies."

"No dirty pictures, Harkness."

"Damn."

Jack clapped Owen on the back and wandered down to the second party. The children were drinking juice, and Rhiannon had mocked up biscuits with the honey they'd found. The littler ones danced to the music like the adults did, unselfconscious and free. Some of the older kids were pantomiming scenes from _Harry Potter_ and _Star Wars_ to entertain the rest. He found Steven among the makeshift audience, and placed a hand on his shoulder, guiding the boy away from the other children.

He wasn't used to this. The rare times he'd visited Steven, Jack tended to sweep into the house with gifts to spoil him and annoy Alice. So much had happened today that only now was it dawning on him that he was Steven's sole remaining family. Jack had fathered children but never raised them. He wasn't sure what happened next.

"How're you doing, soldier?"

"I'm okay." Steven's face was sticky with juice and crumbs. Jack rubbed at him half-heartedly with his sleeve, only getting himself stuck with crumbs.

"You know you're going to live with me now, right?"

"Sure."

"Do you like it here?"

Steven shrugged. "There's other kids here. There weren't a lot of other kids before."

"Where were you before, Steven?"

Steven's eyes darted away. "With Mum. Before she died."

It hurt all over again. In another world, his friends were dancing and drinking and laughing. "When did your mum die?"

"Last week."

But now that he was listening and watching, the hesitation was obvious. Jack liked to think he wasn't completely stupid, but it was going to sting for a while that Rhiannon had to be the one who pointed the lie out. "Steven, we don't tell lies here. What happened to your mother?"

Steven blinked, and his face went sad. "She died. Doctor Martha said. Mum told me to stay with the others, and she never came back."

"How long ago?"

Steven shrugged. "A while."

"More than a week." He watched Steven. "A lot more." Steven nodded.

"Okay. Thank you for telling me." This was hard, harder than he'd thought. "Why did you say it was a week ago?"

Steven glanced away again and didn't answer.

"Did someone ask you to lie?" A nod. Jack didn't want to know, but he had to be sure. "Was it Doctor Martha?" Another nod. Martha had told Steven about Alice's death, and brought him here, and asked him to lie about it. He tried overlaying this revelation with the Martha Jones he knew, and came up short. He set it aside for now. "Do you want to be in a room with the other kids, or do you want to sleep where I do?"

"Can I stay with you?"

"Yeah. We'll get you sorted out." There really wasn't space for another blanket on the floor in his bunker. Jack would find room somehow, if he had to forcibly evict a roommate or two to his office above. "Go back to your friends and play for a while."

"Okay."

Tonight, space wasn't an issue. Ianto passed out with a gentle snore on the camp bed, and Steven lay contentedly on the floor, while the other two men who shared the bunker never made it back to the little room. Jack wasn't tired tonight, and worked quietly around the Hub, looking up whatever information Mainframe had in her databanks about their guests.

* * *

Ianto's mouth had a familiar, furry feeling when he dragged himself out of bed, and he got a cup of water from the kitchen. Jack had come to bed - Ianto remembered the feel of arms enfolding him stirring him from sleep - and left again sometime late in the night, and now he was nowhere to be found. Everyone else was still abed save for the earliest risers and two or three who had yet to collapse from last night's fun.

As hangovers went, this was milder than he recalled, but then, he rarely drank these days and it hadn't taken much to get him tipsy in the first place. He thought back to that pleasant, warm feeling. They'd killed a dragon. There was something primal and exciting in the thought.

Finally awake, he went up to the Tourist Centre to check on things. The morning was cold with only a bit of cloud cover. Good for spotting dragons, bad for being seen by them.

Today they would venture out to get more petrol and stock up on supplies so there wouldn't have to be many foraging trips when the team was off with Mickey and Martha. Perhaps they'd be on the road by early afternoon, travelling while the monsters slept. He heard the door open behind him, heavy and creaking.

"It's a good day," Ianto said.

"I hope." Jack sniffed at the air. "They've been out here recently."

Ianto frowned. "It's early. We can wait an hour for them to sleep."

"Yeah."

An hour turned into two, as people woke and ate and got on with things. Ianto busied himself with tasks around the Hub, and waited for Jack to give the word. When he saw a handful of UNIT people moving to the car park, he set down his tools and followed in a hurry, only to be stopped by Jack as he reached the door.

"Stay in today," Jack said.

"I never stay in." You need me, he wanted to say, but if he said it, he risked Jack telling him that wasn't really true.

"All the more reason to rest now. I'm going to need you later when we get to the main event."

He relaxed, just a little; Jack knew that there was no way Ianto was letting him go to face the nest alone. "Jack, I know the routes best. You'll be out longer with them."

"Then we're out longer. We can fight back now, right?"

Ianto paused. "Right."

He watched Jack go, itching to run after him and take the wheel of the vehicle, but knowing an order when he heard one. Instead he fretted without showing it, fussing at Rhiannon in the kitchen until she kicked him out, seeing to the maintenance duties around the Hub that he kept as his own tasks, and annoying Owen and Gwen whenever he was close enough. Hours crawled by before the alert came in of something entering the car park, and Ianto gave up his pretence of working to hurry out.

He didn't let himself breathe until he saw Jack emerge from the truck, unharmed and smirking. "Got another one."

The warm feeling returned, along with a faint touch of jealousy. Jack's old friend had come, and suddenly two dragons were dead. Placed next to cans of beans and a jar of honey, the dragons were by far the better catch. Jack's half-joking reassurance yesterday that Mickey was straight did little to prevent the little pangs cropping up as Ianto watched Jack place a comfortable hand on Mickey's shoulder.

Jack's smile dropped. His head spun to the opening to the car park. "They're here! Get underground!" His shout was punctuated by flames that shot past the entrance.

They scurried back into the Hub as the dragons (God, how many were there?) roared, deafening. Jack slammed and bolted the steel door, only to be lifted off his feet as it flew off its hinges under an assault. Ianto heard the explosions, one after another, as the vehicles burned. He counted three explosions, and the pops of the cans, even as he helped Jack to his feet and away from the fire.

"Everyone to the sublevels!" Jack ordered. "Go!"

Shouts and screams and quiet determination pushed people down into the bowels of the Hub, far beneath the bay. Ianto hung back with Jack as everyone was shooed below. The air in the Hub, usually cool and damp, now scorched lungs and crackled dangerously.

"They know," Jack said, mostly to himself, but Ianto nodded. Somehow the dragons were intelligent enough to know what had happened, and whom to blame.

"We can fight them," Ianto said. Mickey stood a few feet away, readying his crossbow with a curt nod.

Jack shivered. "All right." The other crossbows were easy to locate, and easier to load. They had no cameras left, but the sensors not yet shorted out indicated the dragons were focused on the car park. Rumbles still shook the whole structure.

Jack and Ianto went to the lift, with Mickey following in confusion. As they touched the paving stone, Jack activated it with his wrist strap. Mickey stumbled but Jack steadied him as they rose. When the ruined street came into view, Mickey looked at Jack. "Isn't this where we parked the TARDIS?"

Jack smiled.

They could see the dragons, three of them. They circled and flew and spewed fire before them. Ianto felt his legs turn to water as he watched in terror. Every day he went out to face these things, and his only comfort lay in thinking they were dumb beasts that didn't know him from a tasty sheep or Weevil. But these were coordinated, and angry, and as afraid as he always was when he saw one, that had nothing on the fear he had now that he could see they actively wanted him and the rest of the survivors dead.

"Okay," Jack said in a whisper, barely audible above the roars and the rushing wind, the fluttering smoke and rolling flames. "I'll lead them out and away. See if we can separate them and take them down." His lips were dry in the heat, and suddenly Ianto desperately wanted to kiss him, for luck or for farewell, but there was no time. "Go."

Jack dashed off across the way, waiting until he was far enough to start shouting to get their attention. Sure enough, two of the three broke off their attack on the Hub to swoop around after him. Ianto refused to watch, refused to look to see if Jack turned and fired or ran and died. He wouldn't wonder how much pain Jack was in before he died, whether he could feel himself cooking or if the pain synapses shut down in a last vain protection.

"Let's get this one," Mickey said, and he charged, Ianto on his heels as they ran insanely towards the remaining dragon.

"Split up," Ianto said. "I'll get his attention, then when you're ready, shout and fire." Mickey nodded, and veered away.

Ianto took a deep breath. "OI! YOU GREAT BRUTE! OVER HERE!" He shouted and waved, and the dragon twisted its head. One enormous, mad eye stared at him, like a cow that could only look at one half of the world at a time. Ianto's paralysis broke and he ran, bidding the thing give chase and praying that Mickey was ready to take the shot.

"Oi!" came the shout from behind them, and Ianto kept running, as he felt the dragon turn. Oh God, it was turning away, it was looking at Mickey, who laughed somewhere Ianto could not see. He heard the twang and the dragon's head exploded with a meaty thump.

Ianto stopped and looked.

Another dragon, one of the two that had been chasing Jack, swooped in over the body of its fellow, and let out a loud shriek. And Mickey didn't have a second charge, because they each had one. Ianto saw it draw back its head, and without even thinking, he screamed, "Over here!"

The dragon whipped its giant body around to face him, and he had nowhere to run. His bow was already loaded, and his hands fired without conscious thought as the dragon opened its mouth. He saw the fireball coming as he let the arrow fly.

In slow motion, he watched it hit the dragon's cheek and fall, and he threw his hands over his face as the fire came at him like all of Hell in one place, and he no longer had to wonder how it felt.

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

* * *

_When the dragons make you fire, you die. Uncle Ianto keeps the names of peeple who die because we need to remmber._

* * *

Jack took down the dragon chasing him, then looked wildly for the others. He saw the great bulk lying dead, watched as the other shot flames and then took flight into the air and away. Okay, they'd killed two and chased away a third. Not bad for a day's … He saw the burning form, saw Mickey yanking off his jacket to beat out the flames, and something in Jack crumpled as he ran, as if through molasses, to where Mickey was putting out the fire as fast as he could. Everything around them was smoke, and Jack's eyes stung.

"No. Nonononono … "

"He's still breathing," Mickey said. "If it didn't get into his lungs he has a chance. Come on." Mickey was cool and collected, as if he saw burn victims every day, as if this wasn't _his_ world ending.

* * *

Owen let Gwen sort out the people as they emerged from hiding. He made his way back to Medical, checking the damage. The tremors had knocked over some of his things, nothing broken. He heard the lift going, and steeled himself for another round of welcoming the heroes. Then he got a good look at Jack and the ruined mess in his arms, and if Owen's heart was still beating, he thought it might have broken just a bit at the sight.

* * *

Martha came out of Medical after a couple of hours and made her way to the kitchen. "It's too soon to tell," she said to the worried looks, though her words were mainly for Jack and Rhi. "Owen's going to keep monitoring. He'll let us know."

Jack tried to read into her words. Hope? Gentle reassurance despite the overwhelming odds? He got nothing, but instead poked at the hollow place inside of himself like a rotten tooth, sore and out of sorts. Because of the attack, and the fears of another one, there was no school today for the children. Instead, they wandered in and out of rooms, tagging along behind one another like flocks of grey geese. Just yesterday, David had been coaxing smiles out of Steven, and now Steven was dragging Mica and her brother through the Hub to cheer them from their fears. Jack watched them, brain moving at a snail's pace.

"Steven told me about Alice," he said to Martha as she sipped tiredly at her instant coffee. A shiver passed through her. Mickey looked more serious, but unashamed at being caught out. "You knew who he was. Why did you lie to me?"

"We needed your help."

"You'd have had it."

"Of course we would have. We'd stroll in, 'Sorry, we got your daughter killed, fancy lending us a hand?' and you'd have said 'Sure!'" Her eyes were exhausted. "This was easier. And I know how you think, Jack. You're a menace to yourself and everyone else when you're acting out of grief. Give you someone to protect, to fight for, and that's when you shine." She might still have been playing him, but she was right.

Mickey said, "Some of our people wanted us to use him, hold him at our base and make you help or else."

Jack could picture it too easily. He'd have done the same, had he thought it was necessary for the survival of his people. Martha said, "We brought him to you, safe and alive. I won't have prisoners."

No. She wouldn't. "How'd you find him?"

They shared a glance. Mickey said, "Alice found us. She had about six, seven people with her and Steven, looking for other survivors. She was with us for over a year."

Jack inhaled sharply. "How did she die?"

Martha said, "She was in the team that went against the nest. We had the arrows. We had the plan. We lost."

"How long ago?"

"Three months." In another world, Martha's face would have been drawn in sorrow for him, but she had watched the world end twice, and she wasn't the same woman she'd once been. She'd lost much of the use of her leg, and she'd lost her family, and she'd had to cope with the apocalypse all over again, and she didn't have time to spare mourning any of it. Jack himself had grieved for Alice a long time ago, and knowing at last put the cap on the pain. She lived only in his memories now, and he could love her as long as he could remember her.

"We need to end this," he said. "We need to go, and stop them once and for all."

Mickey said, "We'll need a way to get there. The trucks are burned."

Rhys said, "I checked the SUV. It's charred but running." When the rest looked at him, he said, "What? It needed doin'. And you'll need a driver. I'm goin'."

"You're not leaving me," said Gwen. "I'm going, too."

"I don't want you both on the same mission. And Gwen, you're off active duty as it is."

Rhys said, "She's a better shot than you are. We all took turns practisin' with the bows. You need her. And I'm not stayin' here without her."

"We'll need more trucks," Mickey said. "If we've got a team, we should be able to take the nest, but we have to get there."

Martha said, "We passed cars that didn't burn. We'll find something."

There was a noise, and only when Jack turned to look did he see Owen, and realised it had been the doctor trying to clear his throat. "It's visiting hours, if you want to come down."

Rhiannon was on her feet in an instant. "How is he?"

"He's not dead. Speaking as someone who can't even say that, it's a start."

* * *

Ianto ought to be dead, just like the others Owen had seen who'd suffered this massive of a burn, but somehow he clung to life, miserable and in pain. Jack could transfer his energy to others when he tried. Maybe some had been transferring along with everything else the pair shared. If life was a disease, Jack could be Typhoid Mary, and Ianto had caught more than his share of whatever Jack was spreading.

"He needs more morphine," Jack said, his eyes locked on Ianto.

"There isn't any more," said Owen. "I gave him the last of what we had." They'd used up the fentanyl months ago. And painkillers were less important than his other concerns. Owen had the dermal regenerator, but it wasn't designed for full-body use. He'd have to go slowly and recharge it every twenty minutes, and in the meantime, the lack of antiseptic conditions and antibiotics would end up killing Ianto as it had the last poor bastards they'd brought back in this condition. Owen couldn't tell Jack that now, or he'd insist on staying until the end.

"Then we'll forage at the hospital again. There's got to be something."

Rhiannon said quietly, "Jack, you have a prior engagement. Leave the foraging to us."

Jack took a shuddering breath. He leaned down and whispered something Owen couldn't hear. Probably some endearment, better if it was a quiet goodbye. Owen made a motion to Ianto's sister to give them a moment, but her eyes stayed glued and she didn't move. Well, it wasn't as though she didn't know, and with the last of the drugs pumping through Ianto's system, he wouldn't care.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," Jack said, and he ran up the stairs and away. If Ianto noticed, he didn't react, and Owen guessed that was for the best.

Martha came down again, and she checked over the few notes Owen had made. The little slump of her shoulders was all the sign she gave. Instead of speaking, she took Owen into a quick hug, full of sharp bones. She pulled back with an almost-smile. "See you," she said, without hope.

"Fuck," Owen said quietly when she was gone.

* * *

The newly-commandeered trucks - filled with the last of the petrol they could scavenge, barely fitted with protection, but running - rolled unevenly over the broken roads. The smells and sights were different out in the country, less filled with ash and more with dung. Although the flocks of sheep and cattle that once grazed here were scattered, the dragons had moved into their spaces, leaving piles of droppings like the floor of a huge birdcage. Myfanwy was out here somewhere, just another flying lizard in a world returned to them.

Beside him, Gwen shivered in the cold air. He should have argued with her more. She was his best shot, but she should have been safe back at the Hub instead of exposed out here on the road, part of their slow-moving convoy and sitting ducks for a hungry dragon.

When the dark shape broke through the clouds right in front of them, it was more of a relief in tension than anything else. The last truck slammed into reverse, peeling out behind them. Their driver hit the accelerator, but nothing happened; the SUV stalled out beneath them.

"Out!" Jack shouted. "Now!"

Gwen and Rhys didn't wait for more. The driver tried restarting the engine. Jack took one look at the dragon and then bailed from the SUV just as a spurt of flame engulfed them. He felt the scorch go down his side, and then Gwen and Rhys were grabbing him, dragging him away from the burning vehicle.

The lead truck had already circled around again, and Mickey had his crossbow out as Martha drove evenly. Jack pushed away the pain to watch as he took aim.

The truck hit a pothole in the road, and they thumped. "Watch out!" Gwen screamed as the dragon blew a stream of flame. Martha cranked the wheel hard, turning them away. They couldn't outrun the flame, but they could dodge. Jack heard screams from the fleeing truck, scrambled madly back towards his own car. His hands were charring and cooking, blistering in pain, but he grabbed two of the arrows from the fire, and gasping, threw them to Gwen and Rhys.

Gwen cursed and swore as she loaded the arrow. The dragon ignored them, still chasing Martha's truck. Jack breathed hard, his senses singing in pain, and he thought he may have to die to heal through this one. Then Rhys pulled off his coat and ran at the dragon, swinging and shouting at it as he waved wildly.

Gwen didn't have time to scream at him. As Jack watched, the dragon swooped around, and Rhys led it back to them. Gwen fired as the beast drew back, and Rhys ploughed into her, knocking her roughly to the ground. The dragon's head blew, casting brains and worse everywhere. Jack smiled grimly, his lungs full of smoke and his arms agonising, and then he died.

* * *

Waking hurt, as bones and flesh kept knitting, but he could feel life thrumming in his veins again. He sat up and tried to get his bearings as his head cleared. Road. Dragon. Gwen. Martha. As his memories slotted into place, he remembered Ianto, badly burned back at the Hub, and he shoved those thoughts away before he was lost in them. He got to unsteady feet and staggered over to the ruined, burning SUV he'd come in, the other two trucks parked safely out of range.

Martha was bent over Mickey in the back of their truck. "Martha?" Jack asked, still dazed.

"Not now," she said, but kindly. As he neared them, he saw the burns over Mickey's face, saw also the rise and fall of his chest, and the few burns elsewhere.

"What happened?" he asked, stupid from his death.

"I'll be fine," Mickey said in a voice that meant anything but.

"We'll have better supplies when we get back," Martha said. Jack saw the bandages, as she began wrapping them delicately over his eyes. "I can't have you injuring yourself further." The worry and pain were tightly-held. Jack came the rest of the way over, and he took Mickey's hand as Martha finished her work. She turned to Jack. "He'll need to go back to Cardiff. Owen has equipment that might be able to help."

Mickey said, "We don't have vehicles to spare, not if we're going to all get there. I can ride in the back. Fix me up later."

"You can't fight," Martha said. "And don't you dare give me some line about suddenly being able to hear well enough to aim." Her words teased bitterly, but the reality hit him: Mickey was their expert marksman. Jack and Gwen could use the crossbows, but Jack had been relying on Mickey being there to keep the other dragons at bay.

Jack said, "We need to go. As long as we're sitting still, we're a target. And forward is better than backward."

Even as he spoke, Rhys and Gwen loaded into the remaining truck, crowding in closely with the soldiers. Jack caught Gwen's eye and nodded his thanks at the dragon kill. She smiled back her welcome.

Martha let out a hard sigh. But she'd never signed on to lead a pack of surviving humans in a futile battle against flying lizards, either. "All right. Get in."

Jack sat in the back with Mickey and two people he didn't know, and the trucks rolled out again.

* * *

The Hub shuddered. Then it shuddered again. Rhiannon knew where the sensors gave their data, had watched Ianto read them enough. The ones that hadn't been destroyed in the last attack were clear. She watched closely. There was only a single dragon this time, lashing the street and outside entrances with its huge tail, burning what it could reach.

After a while, the shudders stopped and the signals went away. She didn't think it had given up. She just hoped it hadn't gone to find friends.

* * *

The nest, as it turned out, was high upon Snowdon, which was both completely logical as an eyrie, and annoying as hell to reach.

"There used to be a UNIT base here," Martha told them. "As far as we can tell, they were hit early on."

"Survivors?" Gwen asked without much hope. Martha shook her head.

Above them, poking out through the clouds at irregular intervals, Jack saw dragons circling. They parked in the ruined car park, which was covered in dragon shit and debris. Rhys got out, head craning to the sky, helping Gwen without watching her. Her expression matched his: worry and fear and resolve.

Martha stayed in their truck for a moment, holding Mickey's arm. "You can't go. You can stay in touch with the walkie talkies. Promise me."

"I promise."

She bent over and kissed him hard, as though she would never see him again. Maybe she never would. Then she got out, a quick sleeve over her eyes, and taking in all of them with her words: "Now, we climb."

"We should go inside," said Jack. "There's cover, and the dragons can't reach us."

"That's what we did last time," Mickey said from the truck. "The blast doors were all broken. The dragons burned out both internal teams inside the corridors of the base."

It would have been like an oven, like a charnel house, bodies burning where they stood. Alice would have been among them, would have died like he had died so many times.

"We climb," Martha said, and Jack followed.

* * *

The rumbling started and stopped throughout the day. Rhiannon refused to worry, refused to send the rest scurrying for cover every time the walls trembled. If they were trapped underground, best that the end came fast instead of choking and slow in the dark, or burned alive as they emerged from hiding with their bleary-eyed group of frightened children.

She made the meals, and cleaned the dishes for something to do. When she went to see her brother, he moaned in his sleep, and twice he called out for Jack. Owen tended to him, but he'd already told her they needed medicines he didn't have, and with the dragons guarding the doors, they weren't going to get them.

* * *

They had almost made Bwlch Cwm Llan when the attack came. There was little cover, and they clung to the ground, camouflaged and shivering, knowing they had to spare the last of the arrows. They had four left after the loss of the SUV, and using even one at this stage could mean losing the goal.

Martha ducked her head as the fires burned around them, wanting to scream, wanting to cry, watching as her friends burned and died across the path from where she hid and she could do nothing. Jack took her hand, understanding and shared grief on his face, but Gwen and Rhys were on this side of the path.

When the dragons flew off again, they waited for an age, and then they stood. Seven left alive, and Mickey made eight back with the truck if the truck hadn't burned. She felt old, and so damned tired.

"Come on."

* * *

Ianto's eyes cracked open. He made a soft noise.

"Hello, there," said Owen.

"Hurts."

"I know." Jack ought to be here, give him the speech about good soldiers or some shit, but Jack was gone. "I've got some pills, but you'll have to be upright to take them. Think you can manage that?"

The blue eyes went wide with fear and pain, but he started to move, and Owen brought an arm to help him sit. The skin where the regenerator had been was healing in deep, viny scars. It would be time to change the bandages on the rest soon, and Owen had debrided enough patients over the last two years to know Ianto would spend the process screaming, even with the pills. And for what?

He got a cup of lukewarm water, brought it to Ianto's mouth so he could swallow the meds, something Owen had scrounged from the back of the cupboard. This was shit, this was all shit. Outside, the dragons waited for them to come above, so if Owen somehow managed to keep his patient alive long enough, it would be for the pleasure of watching him go outside to burn again.

"Here." Owen set the full bottle within easy reach. "The dosage is two every twelve hours. You'd best be careful with them." He placed the cup beside the pills. "I reckon five at once would be lethal for someone of your build. Three would probably be enough for one of the kiddies. And we wouldn't want that."

Owen watched Ianto's face, saw the eyes, dull with pain, flicker over to where his niece and nephew were playing with Jack's grandkid. The world had ended in fire, and most of its people had burned. There were kinder deaths.

"Thanks," Ianto managed, and lay back down slowly.

Owen waited until the medications had taken effect, and his friend's breathing was even again. Weird, thinking of Ianto as a friend, but Owen could spare the word now. When he was sure, he left the med bay and went to the kitchen.

Rhiannon looked up at him from over the book she was reading. Somehow, in the archives or in the ruined library they occasionally raided on rainy days, she'd found a book on cooking with simple ingredients. Owen didn't eat, could hardly smell, but he'd noticed the quality of the food she fixed, how she took whatever the foraging teams brought back and turned it into something better. Peas in a pod, her and Ianto, taking care of everyone better than they deserved, not expecting praise and rarely even getting a thank you. And if Rhiannon had secrets to keep, she held them as close as she did her kids.

He ought to walk away now, ask one of the men. But he needed someone he could trust.

"How many did they leave?" she asked, marking her page. He spared her a grim smile. Rhiannon had told him their father was a bit of a bastard, but Owen thought he would have quite liked to have met their mum.

"Two. Jack stashed them away."

"How many dragons?"

He'd checked an hour ago. "Two."

"That doesn't give us any room for mistakes."

He watched her, but he knew she'd spent time on the practise range in the basement over the last two days just as he had. "Then let's not make any."

* * *

The reek of sulphur was choking this close to the top. Beside him, Gwen held her sleeve over her mouth and nose, coughing as quietly as she could. Above them, dragons swooped and soared, unknowing of their approach. The smell that smothered them also protected them. Jack looked around as they walked and climbed, tried to memorise the faces. Gwen and Rhys and Martha he would always recall, but he didn't even know the names of the two men and one woman in their faded UNIT uniforms, who climbed with dour faces knowing none of them were likely to survive this ascent. When they'd stopped to rest, Martha had shown him her pack, the charges she'd brought. Jack was to take out the dragon queen, but Martha intended to make certain the nest was destroyed as well.

They turned another corner, careful of coming upon a dragon, and that's when Jack first saw it. The nest stretched across a dried-up lakebed, larger than a football pitch and filled with leathery-shelled eggs.

And dozens of nestlings.

"Oh no," Gwen breathed in the pungent air. Jack watched her watch the little dragonets, none bigger than a dog, as they nipped and rolled and played with each other. Their new scales were still bright rather than the duller, sooty colours of their elders, a royal blue there, two almost metallic reds wrestling playfully next to them, near enough to touch.

"Don't say it," Rhys said in a low voice.

"But they're babies," said Gwen, her hand on her abdomen.

Jack said, "Gwen, they would gladly eat us all alive. If they grow up, this will never end." As they watched, one of the reds spurted out a tiny blowtorch flame.

Gwen looked at him. "This will be genocide. You know that."

"I'll take it," he said. "Martha, stay here and set the charges. This all has to be obliterated, or we might as well not have come."

* * *

The Hub had two official entrances, two service entrances, and a quiet host of passages that no-one knew about unless they'd made a sharp study of the blueprints and were good at guessing where the architects had papered over lies. Someone who knew all the ways in and out could do anything, up to secreting in and installing a Cyberman in the heart of Torchwood out of a wide-eyed desire to restore humanity to someone who had already lost it forever. For the sake of the organisation, Ianto was good at keeping secrets. For the good of the world, he'd once told a few of them to his sister over a great deal of booze on yet another long night's vigil awaiting Jack's reanimation and return.

Two of the passages were lost to tunnel collapse, but Rhiannon and Owen made their way through one long, narrow corridor that was on no map but led them unerringly out and up into the ruin of a warehouse that Torchwood had once owned via a paperwork trail as labyrinthine as the tunnels themselves. The walk back was terrifying but short. From where they watched, a safe distance from the Plass, they could see the two dragons wreaking havoc atop their not especially secret base.

"They're intelligent," Owen said. "They know where we live, and they want revenge for the deaths of their mates."

Rhi watched them, frowning in deep thought. "If we get these, will there be more, do you think? Will they just keep coming?"

He shrugged. "No way to know. Maybe Jack and the rest will piss them off enough that they turn us all into magma. Or we'll get lucky and they'll drop dead as soon as he offs their ladyfriend."

"That'd be nice."

"It's not going to work that way."

"I know that. I'm not stupid."

A roar caught their attention. "Come on," said Owen. "Let's go slay some dragons."

* * *

Given a choice, Jack would have taken only Gwen. He trusted her to follow his orders, most of the time, and to be silent when he needed her to be silent, and not to miss when she aimed. But Rhys had told him point blank using small words and large threats that Jack was bloody well not taking Gwen to fight a flock of damned dragons without Rhys bang up right beside her. He might be barbecued standing there, but he was certainly not going to stand somewhere else if she was going to be in that kind of danger.

They were Team Alpha. Team Beta was headed to the apex via another route, hunting for the queen. Martha was alone with her explosives, and Jack could only pray that she'd walk away from the nest alive.

"Come on," he said, in the softest voice he could use. They found yet another entrance to the UNIT base, and slipped inside. It wasn't safe for passage, but for a moment's rest, it'd do.

"Jack?"

He turned to Gwen's tiny voice. She looked out behind them. They stood on a catwalk just inside the door, overlooking a darkness that seemed far larger than the usual rooms without electricity.

The heat rose to them, and now Jack could smell the brimstone reek, not just the stale smell that permeated the air around them but a fresh, raw, primal odour of fires banking but ready to burst into life and engulf them. Over the edge of the catwalk and down, he could make out dim embers outlining shapes.

There was a rocket, massive and phallic and broken, leaning crazily against one wall. Beneath it, breathing hugely, was the largest dragon Jack had ever seen. He couldn't make out colour, couldn't really see shape, was only left with shadow and hot malevolence. The queen slumbered below their feet, but she was waking, and she was angry.

* * *

It hurt like hell. Everything did. By increments, Ianto rose to a sitting position, and then rested there, exhausted with just that effort. Two days ago, he'd been fighting dragons and protecting their home. Now he was hard-pressed to sit upright, and he sat, gasping with the agony that was only held off a small amount by the medication.

He called out, first for Owen, then for Rhi, but no-one answered. His head swam with pain, and he nearly vomited when he saw the condition of what skin he could see. He noticed the patches of healing among the ruined, bubbling flesh, where the dermal regenerator had begun its work. Given enough time, enough recharges, it might render him merely a bent, scarred figure instead of a scarecrow dying from the outside in.

A small face came into view, and he smiled. His face must have been horrible because the child gasped and stepped back.

"Timmy, isn't it?"

The child nodded. Too young for this life, for this world gone to flames, all of them were. "Do you know where Doctor Owen is? Or Miss Rhiannon?"

Timmy shook his head.

"All right. Can you ask David to come here?"

Timmy scampered away, clearly glad to be out of sight of Ianto's shattered body. He wanted to lay back, and he didn't dare, not with the pain it took to move. After a while, footsteps came pounding down the stairs. "Yeah, Uncle Ianto?" David froze as he saw him, and then kept looking.

"Where's your mam? Or Doctor Owen?"

David glanced away, looking at the equipment on the bench, at the drip, anything. "They went outside."

"Your mam isn't supposed to go foraging. Neither is Owen." Ianto took Rhi's turns, and Owen wasn't expendable. But with Jack and Rhys gone, and Ianto wounded, and their numbers dwindling ...

"I was listenin'. There's dragons still outside." Even as Ianto listened, he could pick out the rumble of great bodies above them, stepping and pushing off to fly. "Mam went to fight them."

There was fear in the boy's voice, and pride, too. Their family, patchwork though it was, took the risks and fought the fights, and David was already looking forward to a life of dragon-slaying, the poor daft child.

Rhi was outside fighting a dragon, with a dead man at her side. There was no way, none, that they'd succeed.

Ianto glanced at the table beside the bed, and the bottle of pills, remembering Owen's words. He would have known he was going. He would have understood he wasn't coming back.

"David, fetch your sister. Steven, too."

* * *


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

* * *

_If a dragon sees you be quiet and little. Dragons will chase noisy children. Dragons chase things that move. If you cry they hear you and will make you fire so dont ever cry._

* * *

Martha placed the explosive devices in a careful pattern around the nest, pushing off inquisitive baby dragons as they sniffed at her, unawares. They'd been eggs last time she'd been here, when her team hadn't known about the nest. In her mind, she'd pictured them still as eggs, rocks really, and not big-eyed dragonets with all the apparent harmfulness of kittens.

If these kittens grew up, the world would never stop burning.

She set another charge, checking the timer.

Sometimes Martha dreamed about Japan, about watching the whole island burn, and then she woke up and it was the whole Earth. Sometimes she dreamed about crawling across an alien wasteland with only a Hath as a companion, and then the morning brought the wasteland home. On the very worst days - or perhaps the best - she thought this wasn't real, that her mind had snapped from all the hell she'd endured. Martha Jones walked the Earth, and now her leg barely worked. One burning post-apocalyptic wasteland turned into another out of stress, and she was delusional, and locked up somewhere while the world around her went on as it always had done.

Another charge.

It was a happy thought, almost, that this wasn't real, that it was all a figment of her overtaxed mind. That meant everyone was still alive.

She set another charge, and she remembered watching her fiancé burn to death. Another one, and she relived the long, awful day when she made her way through devastated and smoking streets to where her mother's house had stood. She'd spent weeks searching and digging, trying to sort through ruins even to figure out where streets had been. Large swathes of London had been razed to the ground with no survivors, and while she'd prayed to find familiar faces among the few refugees lucky enough to have been away from the initial onslaught, the only one she ever saw was Toshiko.

When she was younger, Martha had fought to preserve life, had saved humans and aliens alike, had fallen in love with an alien. She'd been so full of kindness. The dragons had burned away her compassion, and she hated them for that most of all. She hated that she could not afford mercy, even as she placed one more charge, completing her pattern. She hated that she had to kill, had to convince others to kill. The Doctor would be disappointed in her, but she knew she was far more disappointed than he ever could be.

A baby dragon, blue scales moving with an oily grace, bumped up against her, rubbing an itchy head under her arm to be petted.

All the world's ills, and still there was this little thing, free of care and wanting affection from the human who was about to kill it. Her eyes welled up. Then she scratched the dragonet on the top of its head as it made a pleased trilling noise.

"I'm sorry," Martha said, voice choked. "I'm so sorry."

* * *

"All right, here's the plan," Owen said. "I'll lure one over, you shoot it." He glanced at her. Rhiannon frowned. "You can shoot. I've seen you."

"I know that. I think I ought to be the distraction." Owen saw a set in her jaw as she spoke, and recognised the expression from many a tussle and one gunshot wound to his shoulder.

"Ianto'd kill me if anything happened to you." But he'd asked her to come with him, hadn't he?

"I'll go," she said quietly and calmly. Funny. If his heart could still beat, it'd be racing in terror, and he knew it. She took one of the crossbows and one of the arrows from his hands. Then she kissed him on his cheek, lingering a moment longer than needed for luck. Owen's mouth couldn't go dry, and he couldn't feel her lips. It didn't matter.

Rhiannon stepped out from their hiding place, crossbow slung in her hand like she'd been living in post-apocalyptic hell all her life. She put on a quirky smile, another expression he knew, one that said the wearer was definitely up to no good. When she was clear of him, she started singing, some Spice Girls song, loudly and off-key.

Owen held what would have been his breath.

One of the dragons twisted its head at the noise, and put on an angry face, as much as the brutes could. Guess they didn't like Posh, either.

The dragon pushed off from the ground and started to give chase.

* * *

"I would kill for some grenades right now," Jack whispered. "Just drop a bunch and run."

"Wouldn't work," said Rhys. Their hides were too tough. Jack knew that. Didn't stop him wishing.

"Hush," said Gwen, barely breathing.

If Jack leaned over the railing, and if the queen dragon happened to be looking straight up, and if he happened to be at exactly the perfect angle …

Jack opened the door behind himself and beckoned the other two outside. When they were out, he shut the door. "We have to get her outside. We'll never get a shot at her while she's in her nest."

Gwen frowned.

Rhys said, "Does she come out? She's in there like a great broody hen. We'd have better luck blowin' up the whole silo." And they were back to Things That Wouldn't Work.

Gwen said, "The nest."

"Yes," Jack said. "How do we get her out of it?"

"That isn't her nest. Unless you've forgotten the big place with all the eggs."

Even as she spoke, the mountain rumbled, and then the queen burst from the broken roof of the silo, gigantic and awful and stretching her great wings to either side, shadowing out the world.

"Jesus," Rhys breathed.

With a roar, she took off, making a great circle before flying towards them. Jack instinctively pressed against the mountainside. But she flew on in the direction of their previous position.

Where Martha was.

"Oh damn," Jack said, and then he took off, running and sliding down the mountain. "Hey! HEY!" Her roars were too loud, and covered over his shouts. Behind him, he heard Rhys and Gwen following in an ungainly jaunt on the loose scree, shouting with him.

If they didn't distract her, if they didn't get to her before she got to Martha, they might as well not have come at all.

Jack screamed at the top of his lungs, until his voice was raw.

"We got someone's attention," said Rhys. Jack turned, and saw two more dragons headed their way.

They had two arrows. One had to be for the queen.

Gwen took her crossbow, and then took Rhys's hand. She looked at Jack. "Get her. We'll be fine." She headed back towards the dragons, and his heart sank. She could only possibly get one of them. She and Rhys were going to die.

"Gwen … "

"Go!" she said, as if she were shooing a child. Then she waved her arms in front of the oncoming dragons. "This way, you bastards!"

Jack turned and ran, and let himself believe the ash in the air was irritating his eyes. The crossbow was heavy in his hands.

"OVER HERE!" he screamed at the queen, but she was too far.

From over the ridge, he could almost see where Martha was. Then there was a blinding light as the explosives went. A rush of hot air, even worse than the stinking breath around him, pushed at him, and the queen let out a terrible scream. Had she been hurt, even a little?

He spared a glance back, could only make out the dark shapes against the sky where Gwen and Rhys had run. There was no time to help them.

"HERE!"

The queen let out a bellow, her rage shaking the whole mountain. There were more dragons stirred awake by the explosions and the grief of the female, darkening the skies with their wings.

From atop the mountain, he saw one dragon's head explode. Team Beta had got one shot off, then.

The queen turned her attention onto Jack. He stood his ground, too worn out and sad and dogged for terror anymore.

He raised the crossbow to aim as she neared him, began to pull back on the draw.

The string snapped.

* * *

The dragon wasn't lined up properly. They'd need a better angle, Owen knew, or they'd never drop it. "Run for cover!" He hoped she heard.

He stepped out from his hiding place and took its attention. Surprised, the dragon swerved, backed away to get in place for the new meal. Owen raised his crossbow, saw the blue-hot flame forming inside the dragon's mouth as it drew breath, and his last conscious thought was that it was all right, really, and maybe he'd been waiting for a proper hero's death ever since he'd died the first time.

He shot.

* * *

If Jack died right now, he wouldn't come back in time to help the others. He grabbed the arrow, clutched it against his chest, and dropped, rolling barely out of range of her breath and still getting scorched for his trouble.

He couldn't see anything in the smoke and the after-dark of the retina burn, couldn't breathe in the polluted air. The only shape he saw was the glow from the great conflagration Martha had set, and the blackout of the dragon's mighty body as she came around for another pass.

* * *

Mickey heard the explosions from the truck. He could see nothing from under his bandages, and it didn't matter, because at this point, he couldn't defend himself even if he saw them coming.

If the others never came back, he'd die out here.

His fingers reached around. The crossbows and arrows were gone, but his fingers clenched around something long. A tyre iron. It wasn't much of a weapon, would be a poor cane, but it was something. He might be able to walk across the car park to the ruin of the little information centre they'd seen on their last attempt at this. He might be able to stay here and figure out how to wire the truck's engine to explode and take out a dragon if one got too close, as if that would work.

There was a noise. Mickey jumped. Then the static came in over the walkie talkie Martha had left.

_"Anyone there?"_ said the most beautiful woman in the world. She sounded like she was crying.

* * *

Rhiannon watched the hot plasma of the dragon's fire consume Owen in seconds. He couldn't feel pain anymore, he'd told her once. But he could think. She hoped, God she prayed, let that stop first.

The dragon's head exploded from the arrow and the convulsing body collapsed on whatever scant remains had once been the witty, sometimes caustic, often caring doctor.

God.

But there was a second damn dragon to deal with, and one arrow left in her hand.

Rhiannon took a deep breath.

"OI! YOU UGLY MONSTER!"

The last dragon turned its head.

* * *

"Kiss for luck?" Gwen said to Rhys. He obliged immediately. "Now run."

"No."

She stared at him for half a moment, all the time they had. The great damned lug would never, ever leave her side, and she loved him so.

A dragon came at them, flapping its leathery wings and rearing up to blast them.

Gwen fired, and then she pushed her idiot husband, where they rolled and tumbled, scraping skin and sliding, but not burning, as the dragon exploded above them.

* * *

Jack held the arrow. It was just a matter of aiming it, just a matter of position.

He climbed up a nearby escarpment as the queen circled. There wasn't much flat ground close by, hardly enough to move, but he could get up to speed fast.

Alice had died here. Gwen and Rhys and Martha were probably already dead. What was one more death?

Jack leapt off the side of the mountain as the dragon opened her mouth, and he felt her jaws close as he shoved the last arrow into the pilot flame of her gullet. Teeth tore into the flesh of his legs, and her bite broke his back, but she'd already been preparing to flame him, and it was too late.

Mercifully, he didn't feel the explosion at all.

* * *

If they were getting smarter, she was dead. If she was in the wrong position, she was dead. Too many ifs.

The dragon was coming. The dragon was coming after her. Oh shit a dragon was coming after her.

Rhi stood her ground.

Every damned day, her little brother went out to brave the dragons. Every damned day, her brother-in-law stood in their way, and half the time, he died for it. Every damned day, her children lived in fear underground, forgetting the sun. As the dragon approached her in what seemed like the slowest movement she'd ever seen, Rhiannon was fucking tired of it all.

The beast opened its mouth. Rhiannon called it something her mam would have said was very rude.

She didn't miss.

* * *

Jack woke in agony, skin abraded and broken, and he screamed, not knowing where he was. His brain was fuzzy, still rebooting, and dragon death always hurt like a sonovabitch coming and going, and he just wanted to go home and be held for a while by someone who loved him.

Home.

He took in a deep gulp of air after his scream, and he woke fully, looking around himself.

"What?"

Gwen said, "Welcome back." She was covered in dirt and grime and a bit of blood, but she was gorgeously alive. Rhys was beside her, his teeth the only things not covered in soot, and while Jack wouldn't use "gorgeous" to describe him, he was still a sight for sore eyes.

"He's awake," Gwen said.

"I heard," said Martha, coming into view with a slow limp. Her face was etched in pain, but she was also alive and beautiful, and Jack could not believe his eyes. "We need to go."

"Did I get her?"

"You did, mate," Rhys said, with a clap to Jack's arm that only hurt a bit. Then he helped Jack to his unsteady feet. "O'course, her boyfriends aren't well pleased."

Now that Jack was more aware, he could tell that he'd been pulled inside the UNIT base into a corridor. Outside, dragons still roared and flew.

He turned to Martha. "The nest?"

"As far as I can tell, it's destroyed." The Doctor wouldn't have approved, not killing all the eggs and all those little dragons. But the Doctor wasn't here.

"We checked," added one of the UNIT soldiers. "We went through the ashes."

Jack nodded. "All right." Now what? The plan had been to come here and kill the dragon queen and the eggs, and they had. He hadn't been able to think past that.

Gwen must have read his mind. "As soon as you can walk, we're going to head down. We'll stay inside this time, all the way."

It would be dark, and it wouldn't be any safer going down than it had been coming up, but they'd be out of sight, and they no longer had to worry that they wouldn't achieve their mission. He glanced at Gwen's abdomen. "How are you feeling?"

"Like I could sleep for days. Let's get home so I can."

With a smile, Gwen helped him on one side and Rhys the other. Martha leaned on one of the soldiers for help - he was sure she'd re-injured her leg, and if they passed a medical bay, he'd insist she go in to patch herself up and scavenge any supplies they could carry - and together they all made their way down into the darkness.

* * *

There had been nothing left of Owen under the dragon. Rhiannon said a prayer Mam taught her when she was little, then she struck out in the direction of where the chemist's used to be, to see if she could find antibiotics for her brother. She'd brave the hospital later.

Adrenalin fuelled every step she took. She'd killed a dragon. They could kill dragons now. They could take back Wales, take back the island, take back the planet, one great exploding beast at a time. When Jack went out for his nightly listens, he could send out the message: this is how we take them down. The human race would reclaim the Earth.

The world would be different as they put it back together. They'd formed an uneasy little oligarchy down in the Hub, with Torchwood on top and the rest of them taking orders. It'd have to stay that way for a while, but they'd want a proper government again, and proper laws, not just "do what Jack says." Otherwise, they'd be setting him up as a king, which no-one wanted, including Jack. Besides, Ianto would make a lousy Queen. Also, they were changing the flag.

Rhi was familiar enough with shock to recognise her thoughts were not entirely reasonable. She hurried her steps.

They'd cleaned out the chemist's shop before this, but she got lucky and found a bottle of erythromycin they'd missed, and it was only a month expired. She dug around for anything else of use, but again, the supply raids had come here multiple times in the early days, and all she found now that she might use was some soap.

Everything had changed, she thought, making her way back to the Hub. She'd walked right by MP3 players and electric shavers, and the burnt hulks of expensive cars. Soap and medicine were more precious than the jewellery displays in the broken windows of the shops. No kings. No gems. Just …

Owen's death hit her then, as it hadn't before, and she let herself sit down on the kerb, mindless of whether there were more dragons coming. Rhiannon bawled her eyes out for a good long time.

When she felt better, she went home. She'd half-expected a hero's welcome, as if they had any room left for heroes. She was disappointed when her children didn't come greet her, and she put the soap in the kitchen, reserving one bar for the shower she intended to take in a few minutes. First, she needed to check on Ianto, and then find out where the kids got off to.

When she reached Medical, she stopped and stared. "Ianto?"

The funny thing was, he must have covered his face when the dragon flamed him, because although most of the skin on his body was a mess, that was still Ianto surrounded by the ruin. It was strange, like looking at her brother's face plastered on a painting of something else.

And then the weirdness passed, and he smiled at her, and under all the damage and the pain, he was still the same boy who'd put frogs in their bathtub and muddied his playclothes. Steven and David stood to one side of him, helping to hold the regenerator thing in place over his legs. It would be slow going, Owen had said. Every bit helped.

"Mam!" said Mica, hopping up from where she sat on the edge of Ianto's bed. "Uncle Ianto is helping me write my homework about the dragons."

"Is he?" She walked down the stairs and got him a glass of water. There was a pill bottle on his bedside table, which she moved out of the way to get his first dose of antibiotics ready.

"I figured since you were taking over the dragon-slaying, I ought to be helping with the kids more." His voice was strained, but his eyes were proud of her, even as they took in the fact that she came back alone. His grief would come later. For now, he would rejoice in having her home.

David said, "Dragon-slaying?" He dropped his end of the regenerator, making Steven hold it unsteadily.

Rhiannon smiled. "Two of 'em, dead on the Plass. Now mind your uncle while I see about cooking up some dragon stew."

Both of her children made matching faces of disgust, and Rhi grabbed her daughter in an impulsive hug, glad she'd already done a round of crying so she didn't start again.

* * *

Six Months Later

* * *

The morning dawned cold and clear over the Bay. From the ruins of the Tourist Centre, Ianto could do a wide scan of the skies, but they hadn't seen a dragon in three months, and even the brimstone smell was beginning to fade under the ever-present odours of the sea. He leaned on the edge of a crumbled wall, resting his cane just within reach.

The cane was fascinating, in its own way. The other survivors viewed the simple devices as talismans, and the three who used one regularly as Other, Touched, almost Holy. They said Mickey had lost his sight but could see beyond this world. (Not true. But Mickey was an alright bloke once Ianto got to know him while they recovered together, and Ianto was glad of their new friendship.) They said Martha limped because she had walked further than anyone ever had or would. (Not precisely true. Martha had walked many a wasteland, and now she was content to rest in the Hub, recovering far more slowly from wounds that hurt her in places the rest could not see.) They said Ianto had come back from injuries that would have killed anyone else, and that meant he was like Jack now. (Unlikely, and a theory he had no intention of testing.)

Out beyond the Basin, Ianto heard voices. The newly-minted farmers had gone out early to their scattered backyard plots, checking the new growth on the Spring planting. Some of the pluckier souls had moved into still-standing homes closer to where they worked, cleaning out debris and picking up new lives from the abandoned remnants of someone else's old one. More and more of the refugees from the Hub were venturing outside to look for new homes up top, and Gwen was encouraging those who did to take a child or three with them.

If he and Jack ever moved out of the Hub, Ianto thought they ought to find a nice little house close by, like Gwen and Rhys had after the baby was born. They'd look for a place with another house right next door for Rhiannon and her kids. Steven would soon have his own room at the Hub, what with all the people steadily moving out, but he ought to have a proper bedroom, ought to play outside. If Gwen had her way, he'd also have a semi-adopted sibling or two, something Ianto was not ready to think about yet.

The door opened behind him and Jack's warm arms snaked around his waist. "How's the weather?"

"Clear. No dragons." Ianto leaned back into the touch. Jack placed a kiss where his hair had grown back.

Everyone had scars now, except Jack who never would. Ianto had expected to die, and when he hadn't died, he'd expected Jack to take one good look and politely and quietly break up with him. Instead, Jack had held Ianto's hand as Martha had debrided the dead flesh from his wounds, and he'd learned how to operate the regenerator to speed the healing, and he took every chance he had to press kisses into the proud flesh where the scars formed.

When Ianto had had enough of the waiting, he'd finally asked Jack when the other shoe was going to drop. Jack had cuffed him lightly on the head, and he'd said, "Do you really think I only love you for your looks?" And that had settled a number of things all at once, and for good.

Ianto saw movement in the sky, and he tensed. Jack tensed behind him, head snapping up to see where Ianto had been looking.

Then the image resolved itself: a seagull, out for an early meal. They both let out an uneasy laugh. It would be a long time before anything flying wasn't a menace, and they'd never really ever stop watching the skies again.

"Come on. Rhys's got breakfast ready, and Rhiannon wants to take a foraging team out to Cathays." Hand-in-hand, they went back down, just as the sun peeked out above the horizon, shining golden over Cardiff.

* * *

The End

* * *

AN: My three favorite words are "I liked this."


End file.
